Herod’s Kingdom Divided

Meanwhile at Rome Archelaus had another case to answer. It was brought by the Jews who, before the revolt, had set out as envoys with Varus’s permission to plead for the nation’s right to govern itself. Fifty envoys were present, and more than eight thousand of the Jews living in Rome stood with them. Caesar assembled a council of the Roman officials and of his friends in the temple of Apollo on the Palatine, a building of his own that he had adorned at astonishing expense. The mass of the Jews took their stand with the envoys, and Archelaus with his friends stood opposite them. The friends of Archelaus’s relatives stood with neither side: their hatred and envy would not let them stand by Archelaus, and they were ashamed to be seen by Caesar among his accusers. Archelaus’s brother Philip was there too. Varus, out of goodwill toward him, had sent him on ahead for two reasons: to support Archelaus in the contest, and to win some share for himself if Caesar should divide Herod’s estate among all his descendants. [a]

When the accusers were given leave to speak, they first went through Herod’s violations of the law. He had not been a king, they said, but the cruelest tyrant who had ever ruled, and they had had to bear him. A great many had been put to death by him, and the survivors had suffered so much that they counted the dead fortunate. He had tortured not only the bodies of his subjects but whole cities. He had disfigured the cities of his own land and adorned those of foreigners, and lavished the blood of Judea on peoples outside it. In place of their old prosperity and their ancestral laws he had filled the nation with poverty and the worst lawlessness. In short, in a few years the Jews had endured more calamities at Herod’s hands than their forefathers had suffered in all the time since they left Babylon and came home in the reign of Xerxes. [c]

Yet so far had they come in patience and in the habit of misfortune that they had even submitted, of their own choice, to see the bitter slavery pass to an heir. After his father’s death they had readily hailed Archelaus as king, son of so great a tyrant though he was; they had mourned Herod’s death with him and joined in prayers for his succession. But Archelaus, as though anxious that he might be taken for a bastard son of Herod, had opened his reign with the slaughter of three thousand citizens. So many were the victims he had offered to God for his rule, and so many the corpses with which he had filled the temple at a festival.

It was only natural, they went on, that those left after so many evils should at last turn and face their calamities and be willing, as the law of war has it, to take their blows in front. They begged the Romans to have pity on what remained of Judea and not to throw what was left of it to those who were savagely tearing it apart. Let the Romans join the country to Syria and govern it through governors of their own. The Jews would show that men now slandered as rebels and lovers of war knew how to bear with governors who were moderate.

With this request the Jews ended their accusation. Then Nicolaus rose. He cleared the kings of the charges brought against them, and in turn accused the nation of being hard to rule and by nature disobedient to its kings. He also attacked those relatives of Archelaus who had gone over to his accusers.

When Caesar had heard both sides, he dismissed the council for the time being. A few days later he gave half of the kingdom to Archelaus with the title of ethnarch, and promised to make him king as well if he proved himself worthy. The other half he divided into two tetrarchies and gave them to two other sons of Herod: one to Philip, and the other to Antipas, who had disputed the kingdom with Archelaus. Under Antipas came Perea and Galilee, with a revenue of two hundred talents. Batanea, Trachonitis and Auranitis, with certain parts of the domain of Zeno, yielding a revenue of a hundred talents, were placed under Philip. Archelaus’s ethnarchy took in Idumea, all Judea, and Samaria, though Samaria had a quarter of its taxes remitted as a reward for not joining the rest in the revolt. The cities made subject to him were Strato’s Tower, Sebaste, Joppa and Jerusalem; the Greek cities of Gaza, Gadara and Hippos Caesar cut off from the kingdom and added to Syria. The revenue of the territory given to Archelaus was four hundred talents. [e]

Salome, besides what the king had left her in his will, was made mistress of Jamnia, Ashdod and Phasaelis, and Caesar also gave her the royal palace at Ashkelon. From all of these she drew a revenue of sixty talents, but Caesar placed her house under Archelaus’s jurisdiction. Each of the rest of Herod’s family received what had been left to him in the will. In addition, Caesar gave Herod’s two unmarried daughters five hundred thousand pieces of silver and married them to the sons of Pheroras. After settling the household, he further divided among them the gift Herod had left to himself, which came to a thousand talents, keeping back only a few heirlooms of little value in honor of the dead man.